


The Rose-Bandit At Blandings

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Blandings Castle - P. G. Wodehouse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-19
Updated: 2006-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:08:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1640591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Story by Peak in Darien</p><p>The modern reader, one hears, does not care for too much about rolling parkland and chirruping birds. He wants action and pace: the thrill of the good chap triumphing over all, the beaning of villains, and all that rot. Shock and awe are the order of the day. How fortunate, then, that the chronicle in question here was full of shock and awe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rose-Bandit At Blandings

**Author's Note:**

> Mild slash implied.
> 
> Written for Adina

 

 

It was a cheerful and sunny sort of day at Blandings Castle, but one does not want to dwell on the cheerfulness and sunniness of the grounds. The modern reader, one hears, does not care for too much about rolling parkland and chirruping birds. He wants action and pace: the thrill of the good chap triumphing over all, the beaning of villains, and all that rot. Shock and awe are the order of the day. How fortunate, then, that the chronicle in question here was full of shock and awe. On that sunny day, a terror lurked beneath the innocent front of Blandings.

Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, had just finished a visit to the pigsty. With a loving eye he had drunk in the well-rounded thighs of his pride and joy. The Empress had been off her feed only two weeks ago, and her owner had seen some dark days. But her appetite seemed to be returning. It must have been that hint of spice in her feed, Lord Emsworth mused, as he ambled along the path.

Lord Emsworth had not yet formulated plans for his afternoon. As he walked, it occurred to him that he might sniff some roses, and perhaps read a little of Whiffle on _The Care of the Pig_. Yes, that was what he would do. His chair in the library would be waiting.

But fate was not so happy to oblige. As Lord Emsworth made his way through the garden and towards the house, he came face to face with a rather sudden shock.

There, floating just above a rose-bush like an apparition from Hades, was the bespectacled head of Rupert Baxter.

Lord Emsworth reeled. He had not had anything to drink, and he was certainly awake. He wondered if he had wandered into one of those parallel worlds you sometimes heard about.

"Lord Emsworth," said Baxter's head.

"B-Baxter, good heavens, what are you doing?"

Baxter emerged from behind the rose-bush, and the Earl saw that his head was in fact connected to his body. This provided some small relief, but it did not detract from the fact that a fully-grown Rupert Baxter was lurking behind bushes in _his_ garden.

"I say," said Lord Emsworth once more, "what are you doing?"

"I'm working in the garden."

"Working in the garden? Working in the garden? What do you mean, working in the garden?"

"I was trimming the rose-bush."

"But these are my roses, Baxter! You can't just travel the countryside, climbing into gardens and trimming roses. It isn't the proper thing."

"I am not here on a casual visit, Lord Emsworth. Lady Constance has hired me to work in the garden."

Lord Emsworth spluttered. He was not a man of many words, but what few he had seemed to have disappeared in one swoop, as if to say "Heave-ho!" and head for the bar. He resorted to gaping and staring wildly as Baxter headed for the house.

It was a desperate time when the Earl sought out his sister by free choice. But that was exactly what he intended to do.

"Connie!" called Lord Emsworth, holding his pince-nez tightly to his nose and hastening into the sitting room. "Connie! Connie!"

"Will you kindly stop jabbering like a parrot, Clarence?" Lady Constance arose from her seat. She was accustomed to her brother blathering and stuttering, but familiarity did not take away the vexation it produced.

"Baxter's in the garden, Connie. Well, he isn't in the garden now. He was in the garden before. He goes around hiding behind roses."

Lady Constance sighed.

"Of course Mr Baxter is in the garden. I have hired him to manage the garden, since Mr McAllister left. That is why he is here."

Lord Emsworth looked as if a prize pig had died.

"Manage the garden? My dear, the chap doesn't know a thing about gardens. Goes about ruining them. You recall he once hurled flowerpots at my window from the garden? Chap ought to be locked up."

"Nonsense." Lady Constance's nostrils were quivering. "Mr Baxter has been developing an academic interest in the management of gardens for some time now. He is ideal for the position."

"But Connie - "

"That is all, Clarence."

It was a grim day indeed. The birds were still chirping among the trees, but Lord Emsworth could no longer enjoy their sounds. He adjusted his pince-nez once more and turned to depart for the garden. There was a chair set up where he could perhaps salvage a few moments of deep thought.

To his relief, the only interruption came from Beach. The butler was carrying a glass of lemonade on a platter.

"For you, sir."

"Thank you, Beach."

Lord Emsworth sipped distractedly. His eyes had fallen on the rose bushes along the edge of the glade. There was something untoward about the shape of those bushes.

"Beach!" cried Lord Emsworth.

"Sir?"

"Somebody's been fiddling with the rose-bushes, Beach, hmm, don't you think? I mean, it looks rather like they've been changed. Can't have roses being changed, hmm? That is to say, the change can't be good."

Beach nodded sagely. He alone could understand the gravity of Lord Emsworth's roses being trimmed.

"Mr Baxter attended to the garden earlier today, I believe," said Beach.

Lord Emsworth spluttered.

"Beach," he said, "do you remember that time you shot Baxter?"

"Yes, sir."

"Got him good, eh? You know, I wonder where that air gun went..."

"Lady Constance has confiscated all hand weapons, sir."

"Blast!" Lord Emsworth gazed out across the lawn. "Oh well, thank you Beach, yes, good, right, yes, good."

Beach understood this to be a dismissal.

When Lord Emsworth retired to his room that night, he climbed into bed without taking particular note of what he was doing. Lord Emsworth did not take particular note of many things, unless they were porcine or floral in nature, so this was not necessarily unusual. What _was_ unusual was the exclamation he gave upon lying down.

There was something underneath the ninth Earl's neck. It did not have the squishy consistency of his pillow. It felt somewhat... thorny.

He sat up and turned around. On his pillow was a single red rose.

Lord Emsworth examined it. He tapped the stem. It certainly appeared to be a rose. But what on earth it was doing on his pillow, he could not say.

He placed the rose on his bedside table and lay back down. He had no time for mysteries after ten.

The morning dawned on Blandings with a gentle glow. The birds and the bees had woken. The flowers had lifted their heads like schoolboys awaking from a slumber in the middle of Latin. As the sunlight tickled his bedsheets, Lord Emsworth began to stir.

He sat up. In the dim fog of Lord Emsworth's head, one or two things could be made out. He could see that there was something different about the bedsheets. Yes, they had changed. But how? Lord Emsworth scratched his head. He was sure they had not looked like that last night.

The roses - that was it! There had not been two dozen red roses on his bedsheets last night. And yet now, in the light of day, here they were.

Lord Emsworth was perplexed. He was so perplexed, in fact, that he rang for Beach.

"Beach," said the Earl, "there are roses on my bed."

"So I see, m'lord."

"There were not roses on my bed last night."

"I don't believe so."

"How extraordinary!" said Lord Emsworth, mostly impressed that he had discovered a mystery. The only mystery he was used to was that of the Empress' feeding habits. "How extraordinary."

In his marvelling, Lord Emsworth failed to notice the distinct sound of Beach's voice. It was not the voice of a butler in a happy, carefree state. It was almost like the sound of a butler who had got the bird most severely.

Lord Emsworth did his best to pass the afternoon in the deep perusal of a pig book, yet his study was not a peaceful one. Every so often he would wander to the window, and out in the garden he would see Rupert Baxter pruning and cutting. The man was a maniac, with all that running around. Gardening was supposed to be a soothing pursuit. These dictators you hear about would have no idea how to arrange the plants just so. McAllister might've had a particular way of looking Scotch, but at least he didn't prune roses like a trampling wildebeest.

No, it would not do. It simply would not do.

"Clarence," said Lady Constance, entering the library with the air of a Roman general marshalling the troops, "what do you think you're doing with the roses?"

"Eh?" said Clarence; then, seeing that the issue had become no clearer, he added, "Eh? Eh? Eh?"

"Would you kindly stop parroting and answer me. What have you been doing with the roses?"

"What roses?"

"The only kind of roses in the house, Clarence. The red ones that are carpeting your bed."

"Carpeting my bed? What? What?"

Lady Constance looked as if she were about to stamp her foot, but restrained herself. Blood will tell.

"There are more than a dozen red roses on your bed, Clarence. What they are doing there, I have no idea."

Lord Emsworth began to dimly recall the strange appearance of the flowers in his room that morning. There had been something about pruning, too, but he couldn't quite recall. Something in the garden...

"I mean to ask Mr Baxter why you're scattering the foliage all over the house," said Lady Constance, sharply. "Right over clean sheets, too."

"That's it," said Lord Emsworth, suddenly seeing through the fog. "It was Baxter. Baxter's been hacking away at my roses. Man's a lunatic."

"Well," said Lady Constance, breathing heavily, "if you really believe this to be the work of Mr Baxter, you may go and tell him so yourself." She exited, again moving much like Caesar on a bad day.

Lord Emsworth did not have to seek out Baxter. Baxter came to him, like a bespectacled homing pigeon. The library door opened once more, and Lord Emsworth looked up.

Rupert Baxter was not a sentimental man. In general, his sentiment regarding the ninth Earl was restricted to a somewhat unpleasant itch. Where Lord Emsworth saw a relaxing afternoon by the pigsty, Baxter saw an afternoon wasted. Yet now, as he regarded Lord Emsworth, there was nothing of the light of future reformation shining in his eye. His expression was unlike any other before.

Lord Emsworth did not notice this. He did not notice many things. He merely observed that Baxter had entered the library, and this was enough to cause him to wipe his brow. First Connie, now Baxter! The last thing he wanted was the library getting clogged with dictators.

"Yes?" said Lord Emsworth, blinking and staring up mildly.

"Lord Emsworth, I have come about the roses."

"Not another one. I've no idea about the roses, but what's all the fuss, hmm? Roses never killed anybody, did they?"

As he said this, it occurred to the Earl that perhaps roses had killed somebody, and he really couldn't be sure. For all he knew, there was a case somewhere with a masked johnnie bumping off people with rose-stems. He hoped Baxter wouldn't bring it up.

"It was me, Lord Emsworth. I left the roses in your room."

"Eh?"

"I left the roses in your room."

"What roses?" said Lord Emsworth, furrowing his brow.

"The roses in your room. I left them there."

"Ah, the roses in my room. You arranged it. The roses, I mean, not the room. Did you? Good, good, good."

Baxter thought he heard Lord Emsworth mutter something about a lunatic and flowerpots, but he couldn't be sure.

"It was a gesture," said Baxter, speaking loudly and in a wavering voice. "I have understood myself to be developing... feelings. Feelings towards yourself, Lord Emsworth."

"Good, good, good." Lord Emsworth did not fully understand, but he did not like the light shining in Baxter's eye. Perhaps the chap was just getting ready to rip out all the flowers from the garden-bed. One could never tell.

"Baxter," Lord Emsworth had begun to say, but he was cut short by a rather peculiar occurance. Baxter lunged forwards at him, and then, as he did so, he gave a yelp. Mid-lunge, Baxter stopped. He stood up straight and rubbed his backside, yelping again. Then, not looking at Lord Emsworth, he ran out of the library.

This was curious, indeed. Lord Emsworth looked across to see Beach outside the window.

"Did you see that, Beach?"

"Yes, m'lord."

"What happened, Beach?"

"I shot Mr Baxter, m'lord."

Lord Emsworth gave a start.

"Great Scott! Did you really?"

"I am afraid so, sir. I had procured the weapon," and here he held out an air gun, giving a shudder of remorse as he looked at it, "from Lady Constance, without her knowing. I had recalled your words the other day. Mr Baxter has been advancing for you on some time, my lord, and I took it upon myself to protect you. But I will give my resignation if you wish."

The Earl spluttered. "Give your resignation? No, no, there's no need to run off doing that, good fellow. Shooting Baxter? Wonderful! Wonderful!"

Lord Emsworth had not known a feeling like this for some time. It was a kind of pleasant glow, and it was not brought about by pigs, or flowers, or Lady Constance leaving for the weekend. No, this was something else altogether. He beamed at Beach.

"Beach," he said.

"Yes, my lord?"

"Would you like to come and look at the Empress? She's having her feed about now."

"I would like nothing more, Lord Emsworth."

"If I could only find my pince-nez."

"If I may, Lord Emsworth, they are on your head."

"Oh! They are. Thank heavens."

Lord Emsworth smiled at Beach. He was quite looking forward to a stroll to the sty. The birds were chirruping once more, and the sky was sunny over Blandings Castle. He felt that the afternoon would be just what he was after.

 


End file.
